CPP 2019 PROGRAM

CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE PRACTICES - 2019 SUMMER INTENSIVE

Below you will find details about the structured training sessions, taking place Mondays-Saturdays each week of the program, starting at 10AM and going into late afternoons. In addition to these sessions, which all registered participants are expected to attend, we will program a number of optional, ancillary activities, including lectures, yoga classes, performances and parties that will be announced at a later date, and will be open to all participants.

TROUBLEYN/JAN FABRE (Belgium)

(Teaching Artists: JAN FABRE, IVANA JOZIC, ANNABELLE CHAMBON)

Monday-Saturday, 1 - 6 July

JAN FABRE TEACHING GROUP (daily, 11am-4pm)

Just like Stanislavski, Meyerhold, and Grotowski, throughout his career, Jan Fabre has put together a set of ‘exercises’ which he uses to prepare his performers (his actors and dancers) to work on stage. These ‘Guidelines for a performer in the 21st century’ have developed into the basis of his teaching and find specific expression in his work.

The series of exercises focuses on systematically refining and optimising the quest for the potential of the physical acting (also known as ‘physiological’ acting). The exploration of the evocative imagination of the ‘body as a whole’ is a leitmotif here. In exercises with titles such as ‘the old man’, ‘the tiger’, ‘the insect’, or ‘rice paper/fire’, it’s neither the imitation nor the psychological aspect which takes centre stage, but the exploration of the physical potential of the transforming body. Here, Fabre attaches great importance to breathing, the use of explosive energy, and the articulations of head, torso, and limbs. A lot of input is drawn from the kinetics of cold and warm-blooded animals.

For a few years now, Jan Fabre has also been training some of his most experienced performers (including Ivana Jozic and Annabelle Chambon, who will lead the 2019 CPP sessions) to teach these ‘guidelines’.

During the week-long workshop, the performer’s body becomes an instrument which examines and embodies the transition from act to acting. The imagination and physical awareness are gradually sharpened and the performer is challenged to build a bridge towards a state of physical transformation.

FROM ACT TO ACTING:

“The contemporary performer unites performance, theatre, and dance. Fabre always looks for physical impulses in and on the bodies of his performers and stimulates them to act on stage on the basis of those ‘real’ physical sensations. Fabre uses the expression ‘from act to acting’ to describe that process: the real physical impact (tension, pain stimulus, exhaustion, etc.) becomes part of what happens on stage. The physiological processes in the actor’s body radiate in the hall, as it were, so that the pain, tension, and exhaustion also affect the audience.”From: Prof Luk Van den Dries, "Het geopende lichaam", p. 110, published by De Bezige Bij, 2014.

SITI COMPANY (USA)

(Teaching Artist: BARNEY O’HANLON)

Monday-Saturday, 8 - 13 July

VIEWPOINTS (daily, 10am-12pm)

A technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with—time and space—into six categories. She called her approach the Six Viewpoints. SITI’s Anne Bogart and our company members have expanded Overlie’s notions and adapted them for actors. The Viewpoints allows a group of actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively, and to generate bold, theatrical work quickly. It develops flexibility, articulation, and strength in movement and makes ensemble playing really possible.

COMPOSITION (Mon-Fri, 1-5pm / Sat, final rehearsals and performance)

Composition is the study of creating theatre works very quickly in accordance with a set of parameters and requirements. The objective is to work with fundamental principals of collaborative theatre making and performance within a very short time-frame. It is a way of generating images and theatrical ideas quickly and testing possible approaches to a play or concept. It is theater-making, drawing upon ingredients from the visual and performative arts, where something new is composed from many diverse parts. Composition also is the study and practice of collaboration.

Sessions will consist of work and presentation in class, as well as work and rehearsal outside of actual class time. All participants must be available to work both in and outside of the class session times.

The workshop will explore and use Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters as source material. The compositions developed during these sessions will be crafted into a site-specific performance presented on the final day of the course.

GYMNASIUM FOR THE SOUL:

“SITI Company is an ensemble-based theater company whose three ongoing components are the creation of new work, the training of young theater artists, and a commitment to international collaboration.

SITI was founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States through an emphasis on international cultural exchange and collaboration.

SITI Company is committed to providing a gymnasium-for-the-soul where the interaction of art, artists, audiences and ideas inspire the possibility for change, optimism and hope.

SITI Company was built on the bedrock of ensemble. We believe that through the practice of collaboration, a group of artists working together over time can have a significant impact upon both contemporary theater and the world at large.

Through our performances, educational programs and collaborations with other artists and thinkers, SITI Company will continue to challenge the status quo, to train to achieve artistic excellence in every aspect of our work, and to offer new ways of seeing and of being as both artists and as global citizens.”